Keith McCoy.
Sherri Burgess
Sherri Burgess holds a photo of her son, Bronner, who died as a toddler.
The dragonflies darting around her son’s grave kept catching Sherri Burgess’s attention.
“After Bronner went to Heaven, I kept seeing baby blue dragonflies,” she says. “I first noticed them at his grave, but then I kept seeing them.”
As the pattern continued, she researched and discovered the dragonflies were called blue dashers. From that point on, the blue dashers always reminded her of Bronner because of their bright color.
When she learned that dragonflies begin their lives in the water and follow a life cycle similar to metamorphosis, the Blue Dashers had even more significance. Two-year-old Bronner passed away on Jan. 19, 2008, after an accidental fall led to him drowning in the family pool.
“God wanted me to know that Bronner’s life didn’t end that night in the water; it began,” Burgess said.
In the midst of grieving the loss of her son, Burgess began gathering ideas for a memoir.
“It wasn’t a decision [to write the memoir]. It was a call,” Burgess said. “I believe it is my life’s purpose.”
Burgess’s memoir, Bronner, primarily reflects the events following her son’s death and her belief that Bronner’s purpose was to point people to God. It also tells her personal story of coming to terms with and learning from her family’s tragedy.
“The beginning of the book paints a picture of our lives with Bronner and then goes into detail of exactly what happened and how we all felt, but then there’s a shift, sorting it all out. That’s the part I really want people to get. Everything [God] taught me, the why of it all, is hashed out in the book,” Burgess said.
Burgess said Bronner’s death “felt like a crucifixion” to her family. Shades Mountain Baptist Church pastor and close family friend Danny Wood remembers that terrible day.
“I was there at the hospital with Sherri and our friend Michael Adler that night when Bronner was rushed to the emergency room. Rick [Burgess] was on his way from Tennessee. The way he comforted his wife when he arrived and the strength he had was incredible. I remember when he went into the room where Bronner was with the doctors and nurses, he asked if he could pray and joined hands with everyone,” Wood said.
Though writing the memoir weighed heavily on Burgess at times, she continued to move forward, chapter by chapter. Bronner was completed five years later and the publication date is soon to be set. With the completion of the book, Burgess feels as though a chapter of her life has closed as well.
“I foresee a future in which my family is whole again,” she said. “I’m separated from Bronner’s physical presence right now, but I won’t always be.”
From the first outline to final edits, Burgess said her husband Rick Burgess was her greatest supporter in composing the memoir.
“He [would] read each chapter as I finished it and would always say, ‘I can’t wait for this to come out; there are so many people who need this.’ He loves it,” she said.
Support from her four other children, friends and Shades Mountain Baptist Church also enabled Burgess to complete the emotional process of writing Bronner. Birmingham-based New Hope Publishers will publish the memoir in summer 2016.
